Principal Software Engineer

Type of Requisition: Regular Clearance Level Must Currently Possess: None Clearance Level Must Be Able to Obtain: None Public Trust/Other Required: Other Job Family: Software Engineering Job Qualifications: Skills: Problem Solving, Software Solutions, Solutions Development Certifications: None Experience: 5 + years of related experience US Citizenship Required: Yes Job Description: PRINCIPAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPER SENIOR What You’ll Do • Define and drive the strategic direction for backend and full-stack engineering practices, architecture, and technical excellence across the organization • Lead the development of scalable, reliable, and secure distributed systems that serve government customers • Serve as the technical authority and thought leader for system architecture, data design, and engineering excellence • Design and implement modern service architectures, data pipelines, and infrastructure patterns that enable team velocity and system reliability • Deliver new features and improvements to our core services including major read/write paths for customer intake, application screening, and information dissemination • Collaborate with product managers and stakeholders to balance technical feasibility with business requirements, making pragmatic trade-offs that deliver measurable impact • Build and maintain shared libraries, service frameworks, and infrastructure patterns that enable consistency and reduce cognitive load • Identify opportunities to modernize our backend systems and take ownership of large-scale technical initiatives that improve system quality, performance, and maintainability • Establish and champion engineering best practices including API design, data modeling, testing strategies, observability patterns, security standards, and code quality • Mentor and coach engineers at all levels on backend technologies, distributed systems, and establish career development pathways for backend specialization • Influence technical decisions across teams and serve as a strategic advisor on architecture and infrastructure initiatives • Work across the full stack when needed to solve problems end-to-end – frontend and infrastructure experience is valuable but backend systems are your primary focus What We’re Looking For Evidence of Engineering Accomplishment • Demonstrated track record of leading and delivering multiple production-ready, scalable distributed systems with measurable business impact • Proven experience architecting and implementing microservice architectures at scale with highthroughput and reliability requirements • Track record of establishing backend engineering standards, practices, and architectural patterns that improve team productivity and system quality • Working experience with distributed system patterns including event-driven architectures, asynchronous processing, caching strategies, and data consistency patterns • Experience designing and implementing APIs (REST, GraphQL, or similar) that serve as the foundation for customer-facing applications • Strong understanding of system transformation patterns with practical experience leading modernization efforts from monoliths to microservices or legacy to modern stacks • Experience with observability, monitoring, and alerting strategies including structured logging, metrics, tracing, and incident response • Familiarity with cloud-native architectures, infrastructure as code, and deployment patterns (AWS, Azure, GCP) • Experience with data architecture including relational and NoSQL databases, data modeling, migration strategies, and data governance Technical Excellence • Strong proficiency in modern programming languages (Java, Python, or similar) with deep understanding of language ecosystems and tooling • Solid understanding of distributed systems principles including consistency models, consensus algorithms, failure modes, and reliability patterns • Working knowledge of cloud engineering paradigms, asynchronous systems, service integration patterns, and event-driven architectures • Experience with automated testing strategies including unit testing, integration testing, contract testing, and end-to-end system testing • Practical knowledge of system performance optimization, capacity planning, and cost optimization • Understanding of security principles including authentication, authorization, encryption, secrets management, and secure coding practices • Experience establishing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines with automated testing, security scanning, and deployment strategies • Familiarity with container orchestration (Kubernetes, ECS), infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation), and DevOps practices System Design & Architecture • Demonstrated ability to design systems that balance consistency, availability, partition tolerance, performance, and cost • Strong understanding of data architecture including database selection, schema design, indexing strategies, and query optimization • Experience with message brokers, event streaming platforms (Kafka, SQS, EventBridge), and asynchronous processing patterns • Ability to design for reliability including graceful degradation, circuit breakers, retry strategies, and disaster recovery • Working knowledge of API design principles, versioning strategies, and backward compatibility patterns • Understanding of system observability including structured logging, distributed tracing, metrics aggregation, and alerting strategies Leadership, Ownership, & Communication • Demonstrated ability to lead large-scale technical initiatives from vision to production, influencing outcomes across multiple teams • Quality driven, sets the standard for excellence in communication, code, and documentation • Ability to communicate complex technical concepts and strategic vision clearly to engineers, product managers, executives, and external stakeholders • Proven track record of mentoring and developing